Note: In college I was an occasional columnist for Georgia Tech's student newspaper, the Technique. Unfortunately, over the course of several website redos, they lost authorship information and many old articles are listed under the name of the editor in chief. I assure you that I'm the actual author of all of these. :)

With the financial downturn getting progressively worse, the job hunting picture for students has grown murkier. In my own case, I've seen the companies I've applied for make major changes, whether that is laying off thousands of workers or even getting bought out.

All told, it's really making me wonder whether I should make the effort to work toward getting hired by some of these companies. It seems at this point that most of the financial services companies, along with banks, are going through such a rough period that any hiring they actually do is not guaranteed at all.

In the end, this is the business world, and there are no guarantees in business. Rather, it is a matter of working just a bit harder and researching companies just a bit more, in order to ensure the position a new college hire gets isn't swept out from under them in a matter of weeks or months.